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Radical Rant

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Electric Tuesday: Melodramus – “Generation Same”

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide

• 22nd Annual Boston Freedom Rally takes place this Saturday
• Sarah Palin did cocaine and Michigan “Fab Five” basketball star Glenn Rice, according to new book
• HIGH TIMES loses to Wall St. Journal in NYMSL Championship

Patient Perspectives

• Federal medical marijuana patient Elvy Musikka discusses being harassed by Oregon State Police
• Mike Mullins and Jennifer Valley from Stoney Girl Gardens
• Joey Nieves from Ontario, Oregon’s 45th Parallel patient co-op

I guess while I was on vacation somebody asked Tina Fey what she thought about marijuana…

Sarah Palin Calls Marijuana ‘Minimal Problem‘

“Well, if we’re talking about pot, I’m not for the legalization of pot,” Palin said. “Because I think that would just encourage especially our young people to think that it’s OK to go ahead and use it and I’m not an advocate for that.”

Unlike now, where we tell our young people that pot use is not OK by arresting and locking up adults.

“However I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts. And If somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country,” Palin said.

Except that we’re not really going to arrest or lock up any adults for smoking pot, because when they are in their house smoking and not harming anyone, our cops have better things to do.

Got it?  It’s critically important to keep marijuana criminal to dissuade youth, but it is also a low priority and, relatively speaking, a minimal problem.  We absolutely cannot stop arresting adults for weed, or the children suffer, but we’re not going to go out of our way to arrest any adults for weed, because it’s not appropriate for law enforcement.

Coming from anyone else this level of cognitive dissonance would blow my mind, but this is the woman who considered “what newspapers do you read?” to be a “gotcha” question, so nothing surprises me from her.

Oh, and how is the effort to discourage young people from using cannabis going?  Well, they find it easier to get a hold of than alcohol, 41% of high school seniors have tried it, 1 in 4 seniors says they can procure cannabis within an hour, and more than 1 in 10 young adults aged 18-25 use cannabis twice a week of more.

How’s that discouragey-young-peopley thing workin’ out for ya?  *wink*

Palin has previously admitted to smoking marijuana, but did so at a time when it was legal to do so in Alaska.

The Alaska Supreme Court made it legal to possess small amounts of marijuana in a 1975 decision, but it was then recriminalized by Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in 2006.  [Which was found unconstitutional and Alaskans still enjoy the privacy right to up to one ounce of marijuana in their homes.]

“I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled,” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006.

So what is this “minimal problem” that adult use of marijuana causes?  That it leads to delusions of grandeur among former beauty queens who quit their only elected office?

I guess it is a problem so minimal that we’ve seen five of the last eight major party candidates for president (Clinton, Gore, Bush, Kerry, Obama) and five of the last eight vice presidential candidates (Quayle, Gore, Kemp, Edwards, Palin) admit to having used marijuana.

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-12

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Three more fun interviews on tap to make the weekend podcast an extra special bit of Stashy goodness -

- Our Celebrity Stoner Entertainment News with Steve Bloom.  We cover the pot busts of Ron “Tater Salad” White, Colts DT Ed Johnson, and the alleged drug lifestyles of Sarah Palin’s teenagers.

- We catch up with Suburban Noize Records artist The Dirtball as he flies out of the Portland airport on his way to Phoenix and San Diego for shows this weekend.  This Oregon rapper has done more than 100 shows in 100 days with some of the biggest bonghitters on the planet and lived to tell the tale, right here on the Stash!

- Westwood One freelance reporter Eric Brenner checks in with his report on a press conference attended by former Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey to celebrate “National Recovery Month”.  McCaffrey couldn’t take the heat from someone asking him tough questions about his role in locking up thousands who never got a chance at “recovery”, and Eric joins us to talk about it.

Bill Piper: What if Gov. Palin Had Been Arrested for Marijuana?
Sen. John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has admitted she smoked marijuana in the past, but says it’s not an issue because it was legal under Alaska law. She says though, that marijuana should be illegal. So what she did should have been a crime. And she should be considered a criminal. But it wasn’t, and she’s not; so it’s not an issue. That’s a more convoluted obfuscation than former President Clinton’s admission that he smoked marijuana “but didn’t inhale.”

While possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use is legal in Alaska, it’s still illegal under federal law. That makes Gov. Palin a criminal in the eyes of the federal government. Does she think she should be sent to federal prison? Or should states be allowed to set their own marijuana policies and the feds should butt out? Eighteen states have marijuana policies at odds with federal law.

And what about the many law-abiding, taxpaying Alaskans who currently smoke marijuana. If marijuana is re-criminalized in Alaska like she proposes, many of these citizens will face arrest and life-long criminal records. Had Gov. Palin been arrested for marijuana, it is doubtful she would be running for Vice President now. In her heart-of-hearts does Gov. Palin really think that people who smoke marijuana belong in jail and not the Governor’s Mansion or the White House?

Yes.

That Queasy Feeling | Slog | The Stranger | Seattle’s Only Newspaper
As former chairman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden is the person most responsible for passing a package of laws in the mid-80s that we think of as today’s drug war. Biden presided over the mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines that required judges to sentence dealers’ girlfriends and small-time peddlers to decades-long terms in state and federal prisons, where thousands are rotting to this day. 

He used hearings “to mislead his colleagues and the public… on drug policy where police, prosecutors and DEA officials got the opportunity [to speak] while opponents were kept out,” says Kevin Zeese, a former director of Common Sense for Drug Policy and a leading drug-law reformer in Washington, D.C. since the 1980s. “Pick a drug law you don’t like from the last 25 years and thank Senator Biden.”

It wasn’t just coincidence that these laws were passed while Biden was at the helm of the judiciary committee. He was the leading advocate for establishing the Office of National Drug Control Policy—the White House Drug Czar’s Office—an agency that to this day gives lip service to drug treatment programs but spends its millions on ads linking pot to terrorism. The ads actually increased drug-initiation rates among teenagers. He’s a conservative on most crime issues. And in recent years, Biden pushed the so-called RAVE Act, which criminalized everyone attending parties where drugs were found. Biden is the drug war embodied.

But, since this is Obama’s campaign, I’m trying to hope—hope that Biden can change.

“Our intentions were good, but much of our information was bad,” Biden said in February. He decried the very sentencing disparities he created between crack and cocaine, which is one of the reasons prisons are full of young black men. “Each of the myths upon which we based the sentencing disparity has since been dispelled or altered,” he said.

A change of heart, perhaps. And when it comes to the playing the old white guy card—a requisite in the run against McCain—Biden’s the king of hearts. Also, nice teeth. They must be fake. Anyway, I like to think that the folks who pushed the drug war in the 1970s and 1980s—Richard Nixon, Nancy Reagan, Joe Biden—believed that it may have worked. Clinton should have known better. But by every measure of efficacy, it’s failed.

Obama cannot alter drug laws on his own—he’s lived a youth of indiscretions. (Realistically, no politician can make any sweeping changes; it must be incremental.) But if anyone has the credibility at the federal level to say we were wrong, to push the Senate for sentencing reform, to back Barney Frank’s bill in the House to decriminalize pot—nobody is more more capable than Joe Biden. And if he does, this could be an excellent four years.

As one commenter at The Slog noted, with Obama/Biden, we may have a shot in hell at getting some positive drug law reform.  With McCain/Palin, we have no shot in hell.  And while the Greens and Libertarians are much better on the drug issue, they’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected.

My personal recommendation – not a NORML official stance – when asked how a drug law reformer should vote is to first figure out whether your state is “safe”.  If it is a lock for either McCain (say, Utah) or Obama (say, California), then vote the issue and throw some love to the Greens or Libs.  The more votes they get the more their platform has to be recognized by the Dems.

But if you’re in a “battleground” state, I believe personally that you’ve got to put your hope on Obama and cross your fingers with Biden.  John McCain literally has turned his back on wheelchair-bound medical marijuana patients and said he doesn’t believe in medical marijuana.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I believe that there is some possibility that quote ‘medical marijuana’ could spread into other areas and that the definition of medical could expand rather dramatically. You’ve seen that in other cases.” (July 14, 2007, town hall meeting in New Hampshire)

“I don’t think marijuana is healthy, I don’t think that it is good for people, and I also, there is a large body of medical opinion that says there is plenty of other medications that are more effective and better and less damaging to one’s health to use to relieve pain.” (July 14, 2007, town hall meeting in New Hampshire)

“I think there’s other ways to relieve pain … I do not believe in legalizing it because I think there’s other ways of relieving pain and applying medical help than that, and that’s my position.” (August 9, 2007, town hall meeting in Merrimack, New Hampshire)

“I believe that marijuana is a gateway drug. That is my view and that’s the view of the federal drug czar and other experts, although that is also a debatable question. I think that there is much more effective ways of relieving pain and suffering than the use of marijuana, and so therefore I view it as something that I do not support. That’s just my considered opinion, I’d be glad to receive additional information.” (August 11, 2007, house party in Milton, New Hampshire)

“No town hall meeting in New Hampshire is complete without some young man who has been sent here to talk to me about medical marijuana … The fact is I do not approve of the medical use of marijuana, I never have and I never will, and you all keep coming to the town hall meetings. I’m always glad to see you, it helps with the attendance.” (September 29, 2007, house party in Exeter, New Hampshire)

“Every medical expert I know of, including the AMA, says that there are much more effective and much better treatments for pain than medical marijuana … I still would not support medical marijuana because I don’t think that the preponderance of medical opinion in America agrees … that it’s the most effective way of treating pain.” (September 30, 2007, town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire)

“The law is the law, and I do not believe it’s going to be changed, and it’s not going to be changed by me.” (October 23, 2007, town hall meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire)

“The will of the people, my friend, is that medical marijuana is not something that the quote ‘people’ want. Certain people feel strongly about this issue, and they show up at most town hall meetings, obviously feel very strongly about it. There is no convincing evidence … there’s evidence, but no convincing evidence to me that medical marijuana relief of pain and suffering cannot be accomplished by prescriptions from doctors.” (Nov. 14, 2007, McCain blogger conference call)

“There may be times when the will of the people, for example Iraq, the will of the people, unfortunately is that we withdraw from Iraq immediately or very very soon. I don’t share that view of the will of the people. And I think the will of the people was that we get out of Korea when Harry Truman was president of the United States, but then he decided to do what he thought was best for the will of the country. Now, I don’t compare this issue with Iraq or Korea, but, look, I’ll be glad to continue this discussion, and read the stuff about it, but I am not changing my position on quote ‘medical marijuana,’ okay?” (Nov. 14, 2007, McCain blogger conference call, said upon being reminded that the will of the people in California was to make medical marijuana legal)

Palin: She Inhaled, By Lisa Lerer – CBS News
(The Politico) Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is known as a staunch social conservative. She’s a life long NRA member, belongs to an anti-abortion-rights group called Feminists for Life and opposes civil unions.

But the self-proclaimed “hockey mom” had some youthful indiscretions.

Palin has said she smoked marijuana but didn’t enjoy it and doesn’t smoke anymore.

“I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled,” she told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006.

At the time, marijuana was legal under Alaska’s liberal drug laws.

A 1975 Alaska Supreme Court decision allowed adults to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use. In June 2006, a law signed by then-Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski re-criminalized the drug. The American Civil Liberties Union later sued the state, alleging that the law violates Alaskans’ state constitutional right to privacy.

Palin has said she doesn’t support legalizing the drug, fearing the message it would send to her five children.

And that message would be what, “Don’t smoke marijuana kids, you might grow up to be mayor, governor, and a vice-presidential candidate some day?”  Considering the unplanned pregnancy of the unmarried teenage daughter of the Alaska governor who would outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest, or the mother’s health in danger, this Alaska governor who would mandate abstinence-only sexual education for your kids needs to work on her own messaging to her kids before she casts aspersions on the message of legalized marijuana.

Sarah Palin had the good fortune to be in Alaska, where personal marijuana use is a privacy right under the state constitution.  She didn’t face arrest for her personal use in her youth.  Had she been arrested, she’d have a criminal drug conviction on her record.  That would have made it much more difficult for her to become mayor or governor – instead of VP nominee Palin, she’d be PTA Hockey Mom Palin still scratching out a living as a small-town Alaskan sportscaster.

Don’t think I’m giving the Democrats a pass on this, either.  If Barack Obama had been arrested for his personal use of marijuana (and cocaine) in his youth, instead of the first African-American presidential nominee, he’d be Barry the Janitor.